Peter Pišťanek - The End of Freddy

The interrogator checks Doložil’s card and makes a note against his name. Then he nods.

“Take them both away!” he orders. “If they aren’t ransomed, they’ll die in the taiga. But meanwhile they’ll be of some use for a time. They’ll pay us back at least in part for the criminal lies they spread about us.”

* * *

Radio Twist was the first to announce that a Slovak photographer and documentary filmmaker, Alfréd Mešťánek, had died on active service. The news was then passed on by the daily paper SME , and soon it was the only topic of conversation.

Most people had never heard of the name Alfréd Meštánek or Freddy Piggybank. A few connoisseurs and lovers of perverse pornography, perhaps, knew of him. His death on the battlefield in a war of great media interest ensured his undying fame. Soon, even those who’d never heard of him knew Freddy’s name. Slovaks, a nation fairly insignificant in global developments, eagerly embraced one more son of the Slovak people who had made the world stage: he had died as a heroic war photographer.

Only now was it revealed how many shots seen right round the world had come from Freddy’s camera. Fired by making and establishing the image of a new Slovak hero, people totally ignored his activity in the field of pornography. Only his fearless actions in Junja were stressed.

He becomes a legend. A posthumous exhibition of photographs from the war in Junja is organized in the National Gallery in Bratislava.

Sida emerges from obscurity: as his loving widowed wife, she takes over the job of assessing everything linked with Freddy. She contacts a highly professional PR agency and skilfully begins to build the Freddy myth, all the better to market the Alfréd Mešťánek brand. Luckily for Sida, they had not yet got round to divorcing. Dressed in black, she plays the role of the nation’s hero’s widow and keeps opening exhibitions of his work. She is writing a book My Life with Freddy . In the Nová Ves house she has an Alfréd Mešťánek Museum built; in his garden she has a symbolic marble mausoleum erected. The workers building it dig only a few metres away from a real grave. Once the mausoleum is finished, masses of tourists from all over Slovakia come to the museum and the symbolic grave, paying hefty sums for entry. Sida’s influence ensures that all mention of pornography is erased from his official biography. It says only, “for a time he also devoted himself to erotic art.”

Actually, Freddy, as is usual in novels like this one, is still alive. More or less. Together with other captured and kidnapped journalists he first has to record in an improvised TV studio a heart-rending message for his loved ones at home. Something to the effect that he is being held, is in good shape, but if by such and such time he isn’t ransomed, he will be killed. Doložil, who has by now adopted his role perfectly, is spared this. They just show a brief shot of him. Then they herd the prisoners with yells into the frozen hold of a stinking old hulk and set off to sea.

After a few days of sailing with no food and almost no water, they land on the island of Ommdru. As soon as they leave the ship’s hold, slaves in rags start loading the ship with green-grey bundles that look like moss or lichen. They ogle the new arrivals with curiosity, but the whips in the overseers’ hands force them back to work. The column of prisoners is about to start a forced march from the harbour through snowbound country to a labour camp, Kandźágtt, where they arrive at night.

The journalists are shocked. Only in films or books have they seen the like of this. They still can’t believe anyone could dare to do anything like that to them, the representatives of the fifth estate.

At a distance the camp looks like any other concentration camp anywhere in the world, as shown in films: several rows of long single-storey barracks, a square where the prisoners are mustered, the commandant’s barracks, dog kennels — all lit by blinding lamps swaying in a blizzard. What’s missing here is the barbed-wire fence with watchtowers at every corner. Only one tower rises over the camp. Pillars mark the camp perimeter, but there’s no fence. All round, from the depths of the dark but snowbound tundra, come the wolves’ menacing howls.

The guards herd the hostages into cold barracks filled with wooden bunks and heated only by the prisoners’ farts. The barracks are full of hostages. They have been asleep, but the arrival of new prisoners wakes them up. They all turn out to be foreign journalists captured just like Freddy and his companions.

“ Witamy serdecznie Państwa w naszem hotelu (A cordial welcome, gentlemen, to our hotel),” someone says in Polish. From another corner comes hoarse ironic laughter.

Without a word, the prisoners move over on their bunks to make room for the new arrivals. A feeling of embarrassment, a vestige of civilised habits, makes the newcomers reluctant to climb into the warm, foul-smelling heap of prostrate bodies. Finally, cold and fatigue win. They all somehow find a space, but none of the newcomers closes an eye. Only Doložil curls up in fœtal position and sleeps like a log.

“I’ve been here two months,” a journalist from the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza whispers to Freddy. “My paper probably hasn’t had the news. Otherwise they’d have paid the ransom by now.”

“Same with me,” says the Slovak daily SME photo-journalist, an ugly scar from a steel-tipped boot on his forehead. “I’ve been stuck here six weeks. I think they’re just bluffing and haven’t told anyone they’re holding us hostage. But it should be in their interest to get money for us.”

“KRŔTÔĞĄÅ!” a squat guard roars after peeping into the barracks.

They all fall silent.

“What did he say?” Freddy whispers.

“He told us to be quiet,” whispers the SME reporter.

“It’s in their interest to wear us out picking that lichen of theirs,” whispers the Czech photojournalist.

“What lichen is that?”

“You’ll see tomorrow,” says the Pole. “And now go to sleep, so you can take it. The first few days you won’t be able to fulfil the norm, but don’t worry, we’ll help you. Otherwise you’d go without food.”

“It’s simple maths,” says the Czech. “If you don’t fulfil the norm, you don’t eat. But rations are so small you hardly notice the difference.”

“Good night,” says the reporter from SME .

Freddy doesn’t respond. He is beginning to shiver with cold. Until now he has been moving and not feeling the cold. Now he can. He has a good imagination and knows exactly how he’ll feel about three a.m.

Fortunately, merciful sleep has him in thrall until morning, when the guard starts banging on an iron bar hanging by a chain. Freddy guesses it is about half past four in the morning. Nobody can confirm or deny it: watches were the first things the Junjans took away from them.

With shouts and blows they organize the prisoners into rows and make them wash in the snow. Then they give them tiny loaves of bran bread and pour into their tin mugs coffee probably made from roasted fir needles. Then they herd them off to work. The road leads into a forest blasted by a freezing wind. Fistfuls of snow shower on them as they go.

“Odd,” says Freddy, more to himself than to Doložil, who sticks to him like a faithful dog. “All the prisoners here seem to be from Eastern Europe. Where are the Americans, English, French, Italians, Finns and Norwegians? In another camp? Have they already been ransomed?”

“No to both questions,” says a Serb marching in the same row. “Nobody’s ransomed them. They simply didn’t survive.”

“The Westerners were the first to die,” adds the Czech. “One tall Swede was broken when they found his cell phone and took it off him. But what use is a phone here anyway? He just lay down on his bunk, turned to the wall, and was dead by morning. Or do you remember those two Englishmen and a Belgian that ran away? Or, rather, tried to run away? I don’t know where they thought they were running. Maybe they thought they were in the Scottish highlands with a pub in every valley to phone home from, or something. They guards were in no particular hurry to go after them. When they did start their aerosledge after a while, they went to look for what was left of them. They brought back to camp some bloody rags and a shoe with a piece of bone sticking out. Wolves.”